Design and Experiment of 4J-1 Self-propelled Picking Machine forChinese Traditional Medicinal Materials

A self-propelled traditional Chinese medicine picking machine was designed to address issue of requiring a large amount of manual picking during harvesting of self-propelled type traditional Chinese medicine．The machine was mainly composed of important components such as harvesting and picking blades, feeders, depth-limiting wheels, multi-stage conveying chains, multi-stage conveying hydraulic assemblies, driving positions, containers, crawler walking assemblies, and racks．Static analysis was carried out on harvesting blade to determine design parameters．After many tests on prototype machine, loss rate of equipment was less than 5%, and damage rate was less than 5%．Test results showed that the test indicators of machine met design requirements, and could meet picking and harvesting operation requirements of Chinese medicinal materials such as Sophora flavescens, Codonopsis pilosula, Scutellaria baicalensis, Astragalus membranaceus, and Salvia miltiorrhiza．